Report: Giant Asteroid Struck On Sea, Can Swallow New York City
A team of data scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently has designed a model about what would happen if an asteroid struck the sea. The results are quite terrible.
According to Gizmodo, seventy percent of Earth's surface is covered by water. So, it is unfortunate enough to be struck by an enormous asteroid - probably make a big splash. The most asteroid-on-ocean situations are water vapor.
LANL researchers are using supercomputers to visualize how the kinetic energy of a fast- moving space rock would be transferred to the ocean on impact. They have submitted the report to the American Geophysical Union meeting this week.
The result is quite terrible and reflects the disaster movies like "Deep Impact". Asteroids are point sources, and it turns out waves generated by point sources diminish rapidly. As a result, this can grow more ferocious and covers hundreds of miles to swallow New York.
At present 7 billion people inhabit the planet. If big asteroids struck the earth- took at least 90-95 percent of life- over 5 billion people would vanish into ash and fire, as reported by Discovery.
Galen Glaser, head of the research team at LANL said," The most significant effect of an impact into the ocean is the injection of water vapor into the stratosphere, with possible climate effects".
The model of LANL researchers showed that when these "airburst" asteroids strike over the ocean, they produce less stratospheric water vapor and smaller waves. The airburst mitigates the effect on the water.
According to LANL research teams, the large rock coming in very hot could vaporize up to 20 metric megatons of water. The water vapor that makes it all the way up to the stratosphere is a potent greenhouse gas that could have the major impact on climate.
However, not all asteroids make it to the surface at all. Smallest sized ones, which are much more common in the solar system, tend to explode while they're still in the sky.
Meanwhile, struck of asteroids over the ocean create less of danger to humans than asteroids over the land, scientists warn.
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